American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol 44, No. 01 (1992)

"Those of the Hebrew Nation . . ." 211
proved to have little effect in the long run.Io (This was true for Portugal
as well, since Portuguese conversos were able to take advantage of the
vastness of Brazil's frontier, which was difficult to patrol.)
While there were no conversos among the famous conquistadors,
several were involved in the conquest, probably including the chroni-
cler Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo and Pedrarias Davila." As gover-
nor of Castilla del Oro (Panama), Dhvila left bitter memories,
including the assassination of Vasco NuAez de Balboa, the discoverer
of the Pacific Ocean. A possible descendant of Davila's, Diego
PeAalosa BriceAo, was governor of New Mexico in the seventeenth
century, was later jailed by the Mexican Inquisition, and eventually
died in France.
The Carvajal family was a famous seventeenth-century New Chris-
tian family of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Luis de Carvajal y de la
Cueva (1539-1591?) served as comptroller of the Cape Verde Islands
and Spanish fleet admiral prior to going New Spain in 1568. He
returned to Spain in 1578 and in 1579 was appointed governor of the
New Kingdoms of Le6n, later called Monterrey. The governor's wife,
Guiomar, a secret Jewess, did not wish to go to New Spain. However,
Carvajal's sister Francisca and her husband Francisco Rodriguez de
Matos, both fervent judaizers, went to the viceroyalty with their nine
children in 1580. The Inquisition arrested Carvajal in 1589, charging
him with not having denounced his niece Isabel as a judaizer.
Stripped of his authority and sentenced to a six-year exile, the ex-gov-
ernor died in incarceration before he could leave the viceroyalty.
Other members of the Carvajal family met a cruel death. The gover-
nor's nephew, Luis de Carvajal "El Mozo" ("the Younger,"
1566-1596), his mother Francisca NuAez, and three of his sisters-
Isabel, widow of the judaizer Gabriel de Herrera; Catalina, married to
the adventurous merchant Antonio Diaz de CQceres; and Leonor,
married to the prosperous mine-owner Jorge de Almeida-were
burned at the stake on December 8,1596."
As noted in the introduction, the Inquisition must be discussed in
any treatment of the Latin American Sephardic experience. It was not
established in the New World until relatively late, in relation to the
Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions-1570 for the Tribunal of Lima
and 1571 for Mexico. In 1610, the northern portion of the Tribunal of